The Simple Life
by samus18
Summary: Not very MIB-ish, but basically a oneshot about an Alcidian woman and the simple, yet not-so-simple, life that she leads.


A/N: I don't know what possessed me to write this. It was originally planned to be much shorter but it grew - probably because I didn't have any plot outlined. Anyway it's nothing special, just a oneshot (or series of) starring an Alcidian woman. Not sure why I chose an Alcidian. They came off as interesting and I thought they could have done with some more screen time. Plus I appreciated that most of them were portrayed as kind and laid-back (barring Forbus.)  
Needless to say, the relationship is not meant to be taken too seriously. They had a few instances in which aliens were paired with humans on the MIB show which pretty much proves it's there more for humor than for the audience to look too deep into it, so I'm not creeped out by this invented couple. Keep it simple!

The Simple Life

Wanida stared into the mirror.  
It was six in the morning and she was tired, but looking forward to another day at work. Unlike most people she talked to, she sincerely enjoyed her job and so had the privilege of greeting each new day with enthusiasm.

She performed her morning rituals, donning her human guise last.  
Wanida had been born on Earth and was as knowledgeable about human customs as she was Alcidian customs.  
She brushed and styled her human hair, put on a pair of human contacts and added a touch of human makeup. Donning two very different appearances was no more unusual to her than it was changing one's clothes every day.  
Sometimes she thought about the aliens that hadn't been born on Earth and wondered what it must be like to make such a big adjustment. She was glad that this planet was all she'd ever known. Her family was happy here in New York City, and so was she.

She stuffed a few oddments into her work satchel, making double sure that she hadn't forgotten her lunch. She'd learned the hard way that if she left her Alcidian cuisine at home, the only option was to go hungry until her shift was over.

Her mouth twitched in a half-smile as she remembered how Benjamin, her human co-worker, had intervened when her fellow employees suggested that she get something to eat in the cafeteria. She'd refused, trying to act as if she weren't in the least bit hungry.

"Leave her alone," Ben said in that disarming style that she always appreciated. "Maybe she has a specific diet or something, you never know!"

'Oh how right you are, Ben,' she presently thought, closing her satchel after a satisfactory inspection.

It had been a year ago but she never forgot that day. It took her a long to realize that it was because of Ben, and not because she'd forgotten her lunch.

Locking the door to her apartment, she made her way down to the first floor and started off for The New York Aquarium.  
She'd been there for two years and was hoping to turn her career into that of a marine biologist. It'd be much further down the road, but she wasn't bothered by how much time it might take as long as she had a chance of making it come true. The Aquarium was a stepping-stone that she believed would spurn her in the right direction, maybe advance her career and make new connections. Between that and schooling, the possibilities were endless.

Most of her free time was spent with other Alcidians, whether it was at a public place or a more surreptitious gathering in which they could mingle in their natural forms. The MIB organization had acquiesced to allowing Alcidians to open up public lounges and whatnot specifically for their kind. How they kept humans out of such places, Wanida didn't know. She figured that MIB had some way of keeping humans in the dark about it, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed her kind to take such a risk.

There were in fact a few humans she hung out with, fellow employees at The New York Aquarium.  
One of them, of course, was Ben. He'd been there since before she was employed and was about the most jovial human she'd ever met. He'd given her the tour during orientation years ago, and she considered him a friend.  
Over the few years she'd known him, she learned a thing or two. She found out that he often volunteered as a deckhand on one of his cousin's fishing boats. She figured that he liked the ocean, otherwise he wouldn't be spending so much of his time learning about it.  
Even later on, she gleaned that his sole desire in life was to captain a cruise ship.

She had laughed. "You wouldn't see much of the ocean doing that! The responsibilities of being a captain would keep you too busy to enjoy it."

"Maybe!" He'd agreed with a chuckle. "I don't know. It's a career I chose when I was seven and I stuck with it ever since."

She saw that he was only ever half-serious about his dream job. "Do you ever think of changing your mind about that? Perhaps a career that would take up less of your time and yet still allow you to be near the water?"

"I just might," he nodded, sounding pensive and yet still managing, somehow, to exude enthusiasm. He pointed at her. "You give some good advice, 'Nida."

That was more-or-less how her days passed by.  
She enjoyed the simple, happy life that she had, the many social interactions she immersed herself in between work and time off among family and friends.  
Complications arose, however, as they tend to do.

* * *

She'd taken to spending more time with Ben outside of work in the past handful of months, and her Alcidian friends had something to say about it.

"I'd be careful about spendin' too much time wit dat guy," said Greg.

There were three of them at the infamous "Nate's Diner" and they'd been on the topic of interesting social gatherings after work.  
Wanida, not seeing the harm in it, had mentioned Ben.

"Nice guy," Greg continued, "not sayin' he ain't, but he's a _human_."

"What's wrong with that?" chimed in Jen, a childhood friend of Wanida's.

"Nutin', except he don't know _yer_ an Alcidian." He pointed at Wanida.

"Oh I see what you're getting at," Wanida said, almost laughing. "Don't worry, he and I aren't _dating_. We're just friends!"

"Fer now, but what if he starts gettin' ideas?"

"Then I'll just have to let him know I'm not interested." She leaned back against the booth, entirely unconcerned.

"What, and break the poor guy's heart?" Jen giggled at the light joke.

Wanida mimicked the giggle and said, "Don't worry about Ben. He's a great guy...fun-loving, adventurous...noble. But I'm not about to start _dating _him."

She'd lain in bed that night, unable to fall asleep.  
She thought over the conversation she'd had with her friends and inwardly scoffed at the idea of her actually going out with Ben. It was ridiculous and impossible, how could Greg have even been worried about something like that?

* * *

That had been months ago.

Wanida never could have foreseen that things would take a turn for the worse, and yet...

"_Tonight!_" She squealed, jumping off her sofa and grabbing a marker off her desk. She waltzed over to the calendar and wrote "7:00 with Ben" over Friday.

This was the second time he'd asked her out on a date.  
She could hardly believe there'd been a first, and yet when he'd asked her, she was unable to refuse. She _wanted _to spend time with him. He _was _a fun guy. She loved the stories he told and the imagination and enthusiasm with which he told them. He almost reminded her of a big kid, but one who balanced his fun with responsibility. Dinner had been an awkward affair, but she explained that she brought her own food because she had a very particular diet prescribed by her doctor.

"It runs in the family," she told him, and he'd accepted it, not seeming to mind at all. She appreciated his easy-going nature. It made spending time with him enjoyable.

After dinner they took a stroll down to the wharves.  
The water lapped against the moored boats and the full moonlight sent ripples along the waterway. The night temperature was slightly chilly, but invigorating. They passed other couples as they walked along the quay but soon found themselves on the outskirts of the dockside.

"Tell me some more of your stories," she'd requested, leaning on the wooden frame of the railing.

He happily regaled her with a slew of stories she hadn't yet heard from him - stories about raging tempests at sea, about the various coasts he'd made berth at in different parts of the world and deep-sea landings he'd made.  
He joked a few times about his Irish ancestry being the very reason he enjoyed story-telling, but she knew it couldn't have been a joke. The way he spoke silently, yet glowingly, of the towering cliff-sides of Scotland, of the elusive Hebrides islands and the foam-streaked tides down in the southern seas that could rock a ship as easily as if it were a wooden toy.  
She hadn't known he was so well-traveled. It made her want to see other parts of the planet.

She blurted, "I'd like to visit more of Earth." Had she been human she would have instantly blushed. She quickly looked at him, eyes wide.

But he laughed as if she'd said something funny. "You should, it's your planet!" She felt a catch in her chest.

Back to the present, she hastened to prepare some exclusive Alcidian fare to take with her tonight. She couldn't wait to spend more time with Ben. Being with him wasn't just fun in and of itself, it was also fun relaying his stories to her Alcidian friends. Her parents had told her that there was no ocean on Alcidia, their home world, and so her brethren (particularly those who weren't born on Earth) relished tales about the sea.

She looked forward to hearing more of them tonight.

* * *

"Wanida," Jen said one day after having greeted her friend with a traditional Alcidian handshake. They were at Nate's Diner. "Look, I've been thinking...maybe Greg is right about you and Ben." She hesitated. "Maybe you better tone down your rendezvous with him. People are gonna start looking at you weird."

Wanida's human face fell. "Don't tell me _you're_ starting to get ideas, too."

She lifted her hands. "I'm saying it as your friend."

"Thanks, but there's nothing to say, 'cause there's nothing going _on_."

* * *

They'd been dating for six months.

Wanida finally admitted to herself that she was in love with Ben.

Amid juggling work and home life, social interaction among her human and Alcidian friends and keeping her feelings for Ben a secret, an interesting rumor began circulating New York's Alcidian community.

Wanida got wind of it during a visit to the diner.

"Hey, Wanida!" One of her friends beckoned her over. "You hear the news? MIB's given us the green light to build an upscale eating establishment!"

"No kidding? When did _this_ happen?"

"Only just," another put in. "It'll be like this place only fancy."

"How does Tina feel about that?" She asked, scanning the room for the Alcidian waitress.

He waved his hand. "She's not worried about competition. Like I said, this new place is more _upscale_. It's gonna draw a certain crowd if you get my drift."

She laughed. "You mean rich people. I get it! Well, there go my chances of dining there."

"The terms are that we have to raise the money, seeing as it was our idea."

She blinked. "'Our'?"

"Well-to-do Alcidians. _They_ suggested it and it sounds like they don't mind pitching in a pretty penny to make it happen."

She smiled. "Altogether it sounds like great news! There'll officially be _two_ establishments in New York City that serve Alcidian dishes."

* * *

Wanida wished that she could share the exciting news with Ben, but of course that was out of the question.

In spite of the time she enjoyed spending with him, she carried a lot of qualms about it, for obvious reasons.  
Her fellow Alcidians were one of course, but even if they weren't, there were still plenty of things for her to worry about.  
She knew that she and Ben could never really be an item. The truth is that they were just too different. She worried about the reality of what he was, of what _she_ was.  
He felt the same way about her as she did about him. It was both wonderful and horrible.  
She knew she should never have started spending time with him in the first place. The more they got to know each other, the deeper they sank and it would be much harder to crawl out as their relationship grew.

So many days of her life Wanida told herself that she would break off their relationship and explain to Ben that she just wanted to be friends.  
She never did.

* * *

It was opening night at the new Alcidian restaurant, named "The Blue Wharf" due to its proximity to its namesake.

Wanida had clocked out and decided to walk the five blocks home, as it would take her past the new restaurant that she'd been dying to see.

The shining new lights greeted her eyes, even amidst the already well-lit city.  
It was bigger than Nate's Diner, naturally, and very spruce. She smiled at the restaurant's title. It reminded her of her first date with Ben.

She stood there a little while, admiring the look of the new place that her people would be able to frequent.  
As she continued the walk home, she couldn't help but wonder, yet again, how the MIB organization were able to keep humans in the dark about Alcidian cuisine.

* * *

"You know The Blue Wharf got a donor?"

"Oh yeah? Who was it?"

"Dunno, he or she wanted to remain anonymous. Probably one of them rich Shimmerlane's with the penthouse."

"Didn't know the place needed help."

"It didn't at first but they ran into some trouble with the permit."

Laughter. "_What?_ The kind of dough them Shimmerlane's have!"

"Yeah I don't know the particulars, but believe it or not MIB had to step in to smooth things over."

"Get outta here."

"No, really."

Wanida and her friends sat silent, eagerly listening to the gossip from the opposite table.

"Wonder what kind of problems they ran into," Jen mused as the talk from the opposite booth died down to a more mediocre topic.

"Could have been anything. It's not like they were building a regular human restaurant. Even those can run into trouble with permits and all that," Wanida answered.

"It's a good thing we got help from MIB. Would have been disappointing if they had to call it quits."

Wanida thoughtfully sipped out of the bowl in the center of the table.

* * *

How long had it been, now? Wanida nearly lost track of time since she and Ben started dating.

It was impossible to truly keep it a secret from friends and family, Alcidians being the social creatures that they were.  
In spite of Greg's initial worry, most of her acquaintances acknowledged it as little more than a phase and were certain that it would end eventually. Even her parents weren't overly concerned about her seeing Ben. It was one of the few topics she didn't voluntarily bring up to them, and they didn't press the matter often, only once in a while asking her how things were between them.  
Wanida assumed that her parents were of the same mindset as her friends: they believed it would pass. It had to as a general rule.  
Perhaps her people felt that action wasn't needed because their differences would settle the matter.  
She found the notion a little disturbing but chose not to dwell on it.

One of Wanida's favorite things was to make a trek out of the city altogether and go boating on a lake with Ben. It wasn't something they did often, but that kept it a special treat. Ben didn't own a boat so they had to rent one when they drove out to the country.

She'd never been in a boat before.  
She was a little frightened, as Alcidians weren't very keen on swimming. All of the boating stories Ben had told her made her vastly curious about them, but it wasn't enough to quell her fear.  
This was easy enough to relay to him without fear of being found out, and he smiled his great big smile and offered to teach her.

She'd never been more thankful in her life that MIB had invented waterproof human suits (there were many aliens who enjoyed swimming.)  
Alcidians weren't great swimmers but that didn't mean they minded getting caught in a rainstorm. Waterproof human suits made life easier, especially when one was out and about often. Still, walking in the rain was a lot different than swimming.

But she hesitated when he offered. "I..."

"How about just stepping in up to your knees?" He grinned, his eyes shone and he held his hand out to her.

Holding his gaze, she suddenly knew that as long as she was with him, she would be safe. She took his hand and he patiently led her into the cool lake water, just up to her knees.

"Not so bad, is it?" He promptly took his shirt off. "I'm gonna do some swimming. Don't worry, I won't go far!"

He waded in until the water was deep enough, then sunk beneath the surface. He came up a second later, spluttering. "Whew! It's _cold!_"

She laughed, standing on one foot and then the other. At long last, she couldn't resist inching in just a bit deeper.  
When he noticed her making the attempt, he swam nearer and renewed his offer to teach her to swim. She finally agreed, reasoning that if he could do it in his natural form, perhaps she could do so in a human guise as well.

They spent most of the day at the lake.  
She had so much fun that she hadn't noticed she'd gone out past where her feet touched the bottom.

* * *

It'd almost been a year.

One night after work as Wanida was planning to meet up with Ben for an evening by the wharf, he caught her as she was leaving the building and announced that he had a surprise for her.

Her eyes lit up. "What is it?"

He gave a hearty laugh. "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise!" He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. "We'll still meet by the wharf. Don't worry, you'll find out what it is soon enough!"

She headed home in excitement, wondering what on earth he was planning. She had a couple hours before they were to meet, but the clock seemed to drag as she waited for eight o'clock to arrive.  
When the time finally came, she made her way to the wharf in double the excitement she'd felt on the way home. She was dying to know what the surprise was.

"Hey!" She greeted as they spotted each other.

He hugged her and spun her around, igniting an impromptu laugh from her.

"So what's the surprise?" She was beaming.

"I'll show you." He took her hand. "It's a short walk but you'll see."

They swung their interlocked hands as they made their way down the street.  
It was a cooler night and they were donned in coats, scarves, and gloves. Wanida closed her fingers more tightly around his gloved hand, and she couldn't help wondering what he would think if he knew how different hers was from his. The thought made her sad so she instantly shook it from her mind. She didn't want to be sad tonight, not when he had a surprise for her. The future - whatever future there was for them - would take care of itself.

They turned a corner and her mouth twitched in a soft smile as she saw The Blue Wharf sailing into view.

As they drew nearer, she was mildly surprised when he led her within proximity and stopped in front of the shining new restaurant.  
They were silent a minute and finally she had to break the silence. "Nice new place, isn't it?" She tried sounding casual and uninterested. "So what's the surprise?"

He turned to face her, and she was instantly struck by the look on his face. It spoke wonders of compassion, but there was a trace of knowing in his eyes that could have stricken her down.

"It's this," he said. "_This_ is the surprise. I'm taking you here."

Her heart nearly stopped. "Here?" She repeated, feeling utterly betrayed by the high pitch her voice had taken. "It's...so kind of you, but I actually ate before I left..." She faltered, knowing that her tone was betraying her more than anything else. She hoped he would believe her and let it go.

He laughed. Not the jovial, hearty laugh she was used to, but a gentle rolling laugh that, once again, spoke wonders of compassion and a very strange sense of knowing. In spite of his laugh, she'd never seen him so serious before.

"Wanida," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. "_I_ was the donor."

She stared at him, dumbfounded.  
Her mouth parted, but no words came out. "The...the donor?" Then she recalled the conversation she'd heard at the diner. "But..."

"Don't be scared, Nida." He smiled at her. His touch on her shoulders was gentle, reassuring. She felt as if she were on the brink of a monstrous tidal wave. "I know about your people. I know that there are aliens on Earth, and...I know about the Alcidians."

The words came, but her mind failed to process them.  
There was no possible way he could know, surely he _had_ to have been talking about something else. Her mind scrambled for an answer. She tried to decide whether to continue feigning ignorance or acknowledge the truth.

"...Ben, I..."

"I've known for months. There were a few things that tipped me off." His smile widened. He caressed her shoulder in a comforting manner, sensing her uneasiness. "It's alright, Wanida. Listen." He made her face him. "I still love you." She stared at him, and he added, "Guess you're wondering why MIB hasn't tracked me down."

She finally blinked. "How...how've they missed you?" She was still in a daze and only half-processing what he was saying.

"That fancy device they carry with them..." He made a face. "Believe it or not, that thing's not foolproof!" He cleared his throat. "You remember that whole, uh...invasion incident -"

"The Ixions," she breathed.

"...Let's sit down."

He led her to a nearby bench and they sat for a few moments in silence. "Anyway," he continued, seeming nowhere near as phased as she was, "I was on my cousin's boat when just about everyone else on Earth was watching the news."

She lifted her head and it clicked. "I see...so you...you weren't _neuralized..._"

"That what they call it?" He made a clicking sound with his mouth. "Whatever happened, well...guess it stands to reason the organization would miss some people, you know?" He chuckled. "Not everyone on Earth has cable." He laughed again, as if the notion were funny.

Wanida finally snapped out of her trance somewhat and looked at him. "If you knew...why didn't you tell me?"

"Just waiting for the right time. I knew it wasn't gonna be easy for you to know that _I_ knew." A pause. "It's why I never pressed to meet your folks. You didn't know I knew and it would've put stress on you." He traced a finger across her gloved hand in something meant to be reassuring.

Silence again, and she swallowed. "So..._you're_ the donor to our new restaurant." She actually gave a small chuckle.

He rubbed his mouth, seeming almost embarrassed. "I...wanted your people's horizon to expand here in the Big Apple."

She stared at him and realized that he was actually bashful. He was trying to play it down, but all in a moment her heart went out to him and she smiled.

"...You did that for _us..._"

"For your people..._and _for you."

She took his hand, smile still gracing her human features, and embraced him.

"Aw 'Nida," he said, reciprocating the gesture. They'd hugged many times before, but there was something more intimate about this one. Perhaps it was the fact that he now knew the truth about her. "...You're something special."

"This is a lot to take in," she breathed, letting him go. She looked at The Blue Wharf. The soft light emanating from its windows seemed to beckon them in. "Do you still wanna eat there? I don't know if they serve human cuisine like the diner, but..."

He nodded slowly. "Oh I've tried your, uh...Alcidian eats! I don't care for it, but that's not a problem." He stood up, taking her by the hand. "Come on. Let's check this place out. I wanna see exactly where my money went!"

They shared a laugh and, hand in hand, made their way to The Blue Wharf.

Wanida was happy. She knew it was going to take time to adjust to the knowledge that Ben knew not only who she was but _what _she was. It didn't matter. They'd take things one day at a time and let the future take care of itself.

For now, all she intended to do was enjoy a night at the new restaurant with Ben.


End file.
